


Milk and One Sugar

by fictorium



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 21:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8506357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: Finding the person you're supposed to be with, making it right and possible and real, is a lot like making the perfect cup of tea.





	

Bernie isn’t fussy, in the grand scheme of things.

The wine can be red or white. Pasta doesn’t have to be perfectly al dente. She’ll buy whatever shampoo happens to be nearest to hand when dashing into Boots. And when she’s dead on her feet an overpriced Costa coffee will do the trick just as well as the vending machine cappuccino with the saddest suggestion of foam, the one that calls to mind a cup where the Fairy liquid wasn’t rinsed out properly.

In theatre, yes, she’s more demanding. After so many years of battling sand and missing equipment, here in Holby she likes her surgical trays to be complete and the scalpels to be as immaculate as they are sharp. She irons her scrubs though half of the staff don’t bother, settling for however they come back from the cleaners, but Bernie is trained in sharp creases and pressing a bunch of cotton trousers at the end of a long week has become an outlet for the stresses of bureaucracy and playing nice.

Sharing an office with Serena has been an exercise in compromise. The initial competition that working life forces all women into, the peaceful détente of working together, it’s all been punctuated by Serena’s merry insistence on providing tea at regular intervals, as though they’re in a public school dormitory surviving on tea, toast, and copies of classics that never quite get read. 

As they become friendly, there’s also wine in the evenings, and even the occasional invite to Serena’s home. Bernie likes it there, smiles when she sees how Jason has carved out his own space in what otherwise looks like something straight out of a Heal’s catalogue. Bernie learns to overlook the pale fabrics and expensive touches, relaxing into the couch beside Serena, and rarely worrying about spilling her glass of wine everywhere.

Only in some strange nod to the end of the night - some gesture of sobering up despite the fact that Bernie isn’t driving home, especially when she starts to stay over in the spare room that is homelier than her entire flat - they always finish the night with a mug of tea.

And dear God, Serena has appalling taste in tea. 

If it’s not Earl Grey with its sickly old lady perfume smell, it’s something godawful that smells like Bonfire Night and dead leaves. Bernie did ask for milk the first time, but Serena’s horrified expression made her hastily reconsider. Instead Bernie chokes down half a mug and uses every bit of her stoicism not to let her disgust show.

But then there’s kissing, and suddenly there’s no such thing as an innocent cuppa. Every word, every drink, every Italian meal is loaded with unspoken significance. Until Serena finds the courage to speak, to say what Bernie has no capacity to hear and well…

Kiev’s not bad, considering.

Bernie sticks to coffee, because tea in other countries never tastes quite right. Nobody offers her Earl Grey at the end of an exhausting day, and she doesn’t have to pretend to like the taste.

She doesn’t even check her email that often. The other doctors have it pinging on their phones all day, but Bernie still treats the internet as a rare treat, a lifeline to all she’s left behind. She sets aside specific time in her day, and aside from the occasional personal missive or invitation, weeding out the relevant from the irrelevant is what passes for downtime these days.

Then on a Wednesday at close to 10pm, it appears. Seconds after Bernie sits down to read, a new email. Campbell, Serena in the simple officiousness of an official NHS missive. 

The hospital needs you, it says. Which Serena does not. Serena, who is tired of being angry, no doubt eschewing the comfort of her overpowering tea for a glass of Shiraz instead. Serena, who can wrestle the concept of love from two stolen kisses and a hundred loaded glances, who can be impossibly brave in the face of everything that has sent Bernie running 1,500 miles to the east, safer in a potential warzone than the halls of Holby.

But if this is her siren call, Bernie realises she’s ready to be dashed on the rocks. She has British Airways open in the next tab before she can second guess herself, a draft of her ‘thank you but I really must be going’ letter to the hospital CEO completed in the time it takes to book the next flight to London. 

Bernie’s become adept at travelling light.

Hanssen doesn’t smirk when she returns on a Thursday morning, half an hour before Serena is due to start her day. She regains her hospital pass, and picks up the clean scrubs she left in her locker, changed and ready and waiting for Serena to walk in.

As a last minute gesture, Bernie throws some change in the coffee fund in the staff room, and makes two proper cups of tea. A Yorkshire tea bag steeped and squeezed within an inch of its life, a generous splash of blue milk, because life is too short for semi-skimmed. After years of powdered, Bernie is done with missing out on the little luxuries. To Serena’s she doesn’t add the heaped spoonful of sugar, but Bernie stirs it into her own with some relish.

That’s how Serena beats her into their shared office, divesting herself of coat and scarf at her desk while Bernie and her two borrowed mugs lean against the doorframe. 

“I thought,” Bernie begins, and God, Serena is beautiful when she’s startled. “That if I’m to come back, if we’re to spend time together…” She’s expecting a frown, a dismissal, but that’s a glimmer of hope in Serena’s eyes. Perhaps all is not yet lost. 

“Are you going to finish that thought?” Serena demands. “Only I’ve got a meeting at 4, and I want to let them know if I’m going to be late.”

“Touché,” Bernie concedes. Of the two of them, she’s never been the quickest to express what she’s thinking. “Here,” she adds, handing Serena’s tea over then taking a hearty sip of her own.

“What,” Serena sets the mug down as though it should be in a biohazard bag. “Is this?”

“A proper cuppa,” Bernie intones, with all the gravity she can summon. “The condition for my return is simple: only drinkable tea from now on. Care to meet me halfway?”

“Lapsang is perfectly drinkable,” Serena grumbles, but she’s watching Bernie now, picking up on her intentions as seamlessly as in theatre. “But if this year has taught me anything, it’s the importance of trying new things.”

She takes her first mouthful, and almost conceals her revulsion.

“My God, it’s like something you’d make for a toddler on a cold day.”

Bernie sets her mug down beside Serena’s, ready to argue her case. Instead she sees the way Serena glances at Bernie’s lips, and decides that softly, softly never solved much of anything at all.

She kisses Serena hello, as though she has every right to. As though she never left, as though she never will again. Their mouths taste like tea and the waning mint of morning toothpaste, and what could have been a testing peck on the lips is too filled with relief and longing not to last longer than either of them expected.

“So.” Serena tangles her fingers in Bernie’s hair, tugging with intent and not letting her retreat. “You’re really back, Ms. Wolfe.”

“If you’ll have me,” Bernie replies.

“Oh yes,” Serena confirms, already seeking another kiss. “I fully intend to.”


End file.
